“Dressed in black, Lela stretched out of the chair like a panther on the hunt.” Would that sentence entice you to know more about Lela?

It worked for me, and I wrote the sentence!

Here’s how it all came about. When I outlined the plots for my Stolen Lives Trilogy, I knew that an International Retrieval Organization (IRO) agent mentioned in Book One would became the star in Book Two, and an agent highlighted in Book Two would take the lead in Book Three.

Ooh. I fell in love with that description of her and had to delve into her backstory. Why was she so serious? What happened in her past to make her such a good agent? At first, I decided she was an orphan, but she ‘informed’ me she had a loving family. Scratch that idea. If her troubles didn’t stem from her immediate family, where did they originate?

Quite often a character will ‘give’ me details during a conversation with another member of the cast. My plan might be for the plot to veer left, then lo and behold, the character will say something that takes the story in a completely different direction. This may sound strange to some readers, but believe me, many authors will agree that if your character isn’t ‘talking’ to you, maybe it’s because you’re taking them in the wrong direction. Lela certainly did that with me. And I think her story is so much richer and deeper than the one I’d originally planned.

After you read about her life before becoming an agent, you’ll understand her desire to help people, and why her boss holds her in high regard.